What happens when pillars of strength in our lives disappear or don’t show up? Three stories, two disappearing teachers and one dad-delivered home birth, show us how we are the pillars in our own lives.

Today I look at all the reasons for stress, and how to solve each one, plus, achievement anxiety, how to change the way we think about what really matters, what good achievement really consists of, and how to be in peace with almost no achievement at all!

Sometimes after dropping my kids off at school I feel a sort of existential crisis – alone again for another morning! What am I going to do!

Work, or course, is what I need and usually want to do, but I still often feel a big void just after leaving the hubbub of the school gates – part of the working-from-home life.

Walking fixes it. Before going home I set off a at a strong pace around one of Madrid’s wilder parks, at roughly the same speed as my mind is moving – fast.

Today I found places to stop, and just look. Look at the trees, and the sky, and the now-dry grasses, and just take in every detail of the scene in front of me. For a minute of two. Feeling the sun, inhaling the pine on the breeze. Not caring what the occasional mountain-biker that passes might think.

And when I set off walking again, my pace has changed completely. The act of stopping and looking has completely changed me. I’m calm, happy. No existential morning crisis. Off I go again, and sooner or later my mind and my pace is up to full speed again, so I stop once more, look around, and come back to calm.

Walking fast is wonderful, walking slowly is wonderful, but stopping every now and again to take in the world seems to be essential if I want to get home better than I left.

This is the way to walk, and of course it’s the way to live. If we don’t stop, often, and just be, just look around, how can we remain calm in the speedy world in which most of us exist?

In today’s podcast Ben talks about the wonder of impermanence, how it can help us weather difficult events in our lives, and keep us from getting too caught up in things, plus how to deal with difficult politicians, and the wonderful Zen tale about the farmer.

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,[…]I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign’d by God’s name,And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go,Others will punctually come for ever and ever.

How wonderful this idea, to see ‘letters from God’ (whatever God means to you) everywhere you go – fragments of beauty, from leaves, to trees, to faces, to clouds, and why not the wind, and scents and sounds – and we can leave them where they are and move on to the next, as the source is infinite and wherever we go with our eyes open, we’ll find more.

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This morning was materialistically profitless in every way. Last night I watched Walk With Me again, such a marvellous film, the perfect meditation on life in Plum Village, where we spent many summer weeks over the years.

And in the calm it induced, I saw how my mind has been tripping me up with its old troublesome ticks and tricks for the past few weeks, and I know that when this happens I need a rest, that I need to reestablish some inner peace.

So I headed for wild parkland this morning, full of ‘shoulds’ and ‘ought to’s’ and thoughts of work not-done, feeling overwrought by the usual demands on myself to be living a productive life.

I found a long grove of tall pines with a thread of a path running through the middle, and decided to walk the few hundred metres back-and-forth beneath those trees until my mind found some rest.

Lucky for me, I had some help. Tiny birds high up in the trees, whistling at me. Wake Up! Listen! And I set me ears to listen keenly to the birdsong, and the sound of the wind in the branches, and the sound of my feet crunching on wood chips – all ‘letters from God’ – and I found that when my mind was full of the sounds, and only the sounds, the shoulds and ought to’s and all the other tiresome mental noise were no longer there.

This is what meditation can do for us! I’d completely forgotten. It brings us back to what is in front of us, to the reality beyond my unhelpful thoughts.

The birds, and the wind, and the sound of my feet replaced thought and all mental troubles, and although I couldn’t say at first, ‘this is happiness,’ I could say, ‘this is peace.’ Which is the kind of happiness I really seek.

So perhaps it has been the most profitable morning I’ve had for months. And now with ears and eyes open I’m heading out again, to look for ‘letters from God dropt in the street’, to love them and ‘leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe’er I go, Others will punctually come for ever and ever.’

A reader wrote in explaining a difficult interaction with some relatives, where a great moment was ruined by a very negative comment, which led to their question:

“My question is, how to stay positive in a negative, toxic environment? My way is to not engage as I know I will never get them to see my point of view. There are many people like this around us.”

Many years ago my wife and I had a consultation with a very old and very highly respected buddhist nun called Sister Chân Không. We asked her what to do about some relatives who were causing us quite a lot of suffering at the time. Without skipping a beat, she gave us her answer: “Short, positive contact”.

It’s become a mantra for us where difficult people are concerned ever since: Short Positive Contact! There may be people that we just can’t avoid seeing in our lives, but who make our lives difficult. The only answer is to keep meetings few and far between, brief, and as much as possible, positive.

How to make them positive? Sometimes this might mean we feel more comfortable meeting in a restaurant than in one of our homes, where the meal gives a fixed beginning and end to the amount of time we’ll spend together, and being in public tends to encourage better behaviour!

Sometimes it might mean just bringing these people to our own house, and not going to their’s, so we feel more solid on home ground. It may mean planning a specific activity that seems to keep things in balance. The point is to feel as comfortable as possible with the plan to begin with.

As the reader says, “My way is to not engage as I know I will never get them to see my point of view. ” Quite right! Not engaging in the negativity is a very good plan. As is excusing oneself and walking away from a difficult conversation, or changing the subject whenever tricky topics come up.

I had a relative-in-law who was quite a hypochondriac, and hated any conversation about ill health. Whenever this topic came up, he’d immediately say, “So what’s going on in the football these days?” cleverly changing the subject. The Spanish call this tener mano izquierda – ‘to have left hand’. With this trick he escaped many a conversation that was toxic for him.

Of course, wherever possible it’s best to keep very negative people out of our lives altogether, and surround ourselves with positive people. When we can’t, as well as the above strategies, there are two more things that can help a lot.

Firstly, to make sure we are bolstered with as much of our own inner-positivity as possible. It’s like dealing with air pollution in the city – the healthier we are, the more walks in the fresh-air of the countryside we take regularly, the better our bodies deal with bad-air days. The more we find the best ways to keep ourselves happy and positive, and look after our own inner-lives, the better we can deal with difficult-people days.

Secondly, there is empathy. Why is this difficult person so difficult? What has happened in their lives to make them like this? What fundamental life-need are they lacking that is making them so unhappy and hard to be with? Very few people are naturally toxic or negative, something has made them that way.

If we can stand for a moment in their shoes, or look at where they have come from, or what they are lacking, and get even a tiny idea of the suffering in their lives, it can make the situation much easier for us if we need to spend time with them. This deep looking and understanding has made a big difference to my relationship with some people in my life, but it can also help us not to be too affected by the angry driver in the car behind, or the grumpy waiter or waitress in a restaurant – something’s up with them that we can’t see.

So, empathy, empathy, empathy, and if total avoidance isn’t an option: Short Positive Contact. As short and as positive as can be.

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If you have a question related to the kind of topic found on this blog – awakening, art, creativity, life! – that you would be happy for me to answer as a blog post, please send it to me via the contact page. Q and A’s help me to understand what I read, see, and appreciate. Comments are welcome via the same contact page. Thank you.

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